Artificial intelligence is introducing radically new agents into our world. While these autonomous systems increasingly shape our reality, our understanding of them is often limited by abstract interfaces, obscuring their complex operational behaviors and potential for unexpected interactions.
World Engines Lab addresses this gap. The Lab creates and maintains an editable lab server running persistent Unreal Engine worlds with unfolding multi-agent ecosystems. Within these virtual worlds, the lab facilitates artists, researchers, and the public to directly interact with autonomous agents to investigate emergent, creative and novel behaviors.
The inherent unknowns of human-agent and agent-to-agent interaction are explored for their potential to generate novel dynamics and artistic results using a variety of new techniques like LLMs for agent behavior or motion-capture for human-agent communication. Elements like behavior and the evolution of communication are put directly under the microscope.
These environments serve simultaneously as subjects of scientific analysis and as dynamic stages for artistic exploration. The insights and creations generated by the Lab's work within this controlled ecology manifest across three interconnected streams:
